African-American History and Race Relations

AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY AND RACE RELATIONS Table of Contents Preface . 1 Darwin H. Stapleton Acknowledgments . 1 Introduction . 2 Kenneth W. Rose and Thomas E. Rosenbaum User’s Guide . 21 Column headings . .22 Collections Included in the Survey . 23 Abbreviations . .27 Survey . 30 A Survey of Sources at the Rockefeller Archive Center for the Study of African-American History and Race Relations Preface The immediate occasion for the preparation of this survey was a conference on "Philanthropy in the African-American Experience," funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and held at the Rockefeller Archive Center in September 1992. The conference was organized by Professor Adrienne Jones of Oberlin College in consultation with Dr. Kenneth W. Rose of the Archive Center. In order to introduce the conferees to the riches of the records related to African Americans in the collections of the Archive Center, several members of the Rockefeller Archive Center staff collaborated on the preparation of a survey for circulation among those attending the conference. The result was so obviously an exceptional research tool that we decided to seek outside distribution. The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University published and distributed the survey in 1993, and I am delighted to make it available on-line. I invite all scholars who find something of interest in this survey to mine the Archive Center's collections and to enrich the historical understanding of the African-American experience. Darwin H. Stapleton Executive Director, Rockefeller Archive Center Acknowledgements The title page of this survey carries the names of four compilers, but many more people have contributed to its development. In a general sense, this survey owes its existence to the many members of the office staffs of the organizations whose records are now located at the Rockefeller Archive Center. Their painstaking efforts to organize, manage, and preserve these records and to prepare the detailed card indexes and inventories made it possible to identify the appropriate files and to provide a high level of detail in the survey. We are especially indebted to Joseph W. Ernst, the Rockefeller Family archivist and the first director of the Rockefeller Archive Center, whose detailed descriptions of material in the Rockefeller Family archives appear often throughout the survey. We are grateful to our colleagues at the Rockefeller Archive Center for sharing their insights into various collections. Darwin H. Stapleton, the Center's director, provided enthusiastic encouragement and support from the moment this project was proposed. Melissa Smith reviewed an early version of the survey, as did Valerie Komor, who also helped prepare the list of abbreviations used. Erwin Levold identified relevant material in the Commonwealth Fund archives and also made useful suggestions on various drafts of the survey and the introduction. Professor August Meier provided a valuable critique of a later version of the introduction, for which we are grateful. We greatly appreciate his support and encouragement and the time he took to read the material and talk with us about it. At the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, we wish to thank Dwight Burlingame for his willingness to undertake a joint publishing venture with the Archive Center to publish the first version of this survey. We also are grateful to Lois Sherman, the managing editor at the Center on Philanthropy, for her efforts in 1992-1993 in publishing this survey. At the Archive Center, John LeGloahec oversaw the preparation of the on- line version. Introduction, by Kenneth W. Rose and Thomas E. Rosenbaum Ever since 1882, when John D. Rockefeller made his first donation to the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary (later renamed Spelman Seminary in honor of his abolitionist in-laws), the education and general welfare of African Americans has been a recurring theme in Rockefeller philanthropy. The ledger books, pledge cards, and correspondence documenting this philanthropy are available to researchers at the Rockefeller Archive Center. Over the past 20 years, more than two thousand scholars have visited the Center to examine the records of such organizations as the General Education Board (GEB), formed in 1902 to improve educational conditions and opportunities in the U.S. “without distinction of race, sex, or creed.” These scholars are producing a growing body of literature on various aspects of Rockefeller philanthropy, including its relationship with the African-American community. Examples of this literature include James D. Anderson's The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (1988) and Darlene Clarke Hine's Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890-1950 (1989). Anderson uses the records of the GEB to show how northern philanthropists influenced “the structure, ideology, and content of black education.” Hine draws upon the records of the GEB, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, and the Rockefeller Foundation and argues that, by his support for Spelman College and its department of nursing in 1886, Rockefeller “financed the establishment of the nation's first black nursing training school.”1 While education has been central to it, Rockefeller philanthropy has been involved in other aspects of life in the black community as well. Nancy Weiss has noted that supporting the National Urban League “was a [Rockefeller] family tradition.” In addition to chronicling the family's support for the organization itself, she has examined the role Rockefeller philanthropy played in the evolution of the career of Whitney Young, Jr.2 Waldemar Nielsen has argued that John D. Rockefeller, Jr. personally and “persistently encouraged his friends to take an interest” in African-Americans' welfare, and that “through his own great prestige he ... made interest in the black problem ‘respectable’ in business and other circles.”3 Rockefeller's construction of the Paul Laurence Dunbar Apartments in Harlem has been discussed by Gilbert Osofsky in Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto and by David Lewis in When Harlem Was in Vogue.4 Most recently, readers of Taylor Branch's award-winning biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., may have been astonished to read that “insofar as the Kings encountered anything better than obstruction in the white world, it could be traced more often than not to the influence of a most unlikely source, John D. Rockefeller.” Branch shows how Rockefeller money supported many institutions that were important in Dr. King's life, from Spelman College to Riverside Church.5 This survey of sources on race relations and African-American history available at the Rockefeller Archive Center is intended to invite much more scholarship by students of the African-American experience and by students of philanthropy. Containing more than 2,250 entries, the survey lists in alphabetical order the institutions and individuals funded by Rockefeller philanthropy as they are represented by the titles of the folders of documents in the Center's collections. Material listed in the survey documents more than a century of Rockefeller philanthropy; the development of important African-American institutions and personal careers; and changing attitudes towards African Americans, race relations, and the idea of racial harmony and equality. The Rockefeller Archive Center The Rockefeller Archive Center is located in Sleepy Hollow, New York, about 25 miles north of New York City. Organized in 1974, the Center opened to researchers the following year and now serves about 260 research visitors each year. The archival collections at the Center include the personal papers of John D. Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., John D. Rockefeller 3rd, and Nelson A. Rockefeller. The Center also holds the files of the Office of the Messrs Rockefeller from 1890 through 1961. This office was the philanthropic and business office of the family, and these files are open for research unless they pertain to living family members. In addition to these personal papers, the Archive Center holds the records of various philanthropic organizations founded by the family as well as a few non-Rockefeller institutions, such as the Commonwealth Fund, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the John and Mary Markle Foundation. For historians of the African-American experience, the most significant collections at the Archive Center will be the records of the General Education Board, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the papers in the Rockefeller Family Archives. Rockefeller Philanthropy for African Americans: An Overview Scholars who have used the collections at the Rockefeller Archive Center to examine themes in African-American history have produced a significant body of literature. Their research has been concentrated in certain pockets of the collections, however, and many questions and issues remain unexplored. This introductory essay draws upon the collections themselves and selectively from the published literature to provide a historical overview of Rockefeller philanthropy as it relates to African Americans. It attempts (1) to sketch the broad outlines of Rockefeller philanthropy and its support for the black community and for improved race relations; (2) to indicate the kinds of material that researchers will find in the collections; and (3) to suggest questions and issues that future researchers might wish to pursue. This essay does not attempt to present a comprehensive bibliographic

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